Ancient Forests

The CurrCon Java Applet displays prices on this
web page converted with today’s exchange rates into your local international currency,
e.g. Euros, US dollars, Canadian dollars, British Pounds, Indian Rupees…
CurrCon requires an up-to-date browser
and Java version 1.8, preferably 1.8.0_131.
If you can’t see the prices in your local currency,
Troubleshoot. Use Firefox for best results.

Preserving the Ancient Forests

I live in British Columbia Canada, home to the
only inland temperate rain forest, home to the last forests of 2000 year old Douglas fir and cedar trees. I live on Vancouver Island,
where only 11% of these forests are left and at the present
rate will be completely gone in 15 years, lost to clear cut logging.

The irony is American forestry companies such as Weyerhaeuser are clear cutting these
priceless trees and selling them as raw logs. The trees are on crown land and belong to
the people of BC. Weyerhaeuser pays only
$0.25 CAD
a cubic metre. (Spruce weighs about 450 kg(992.08 lbs)
per cubic metre, so this works out to about 1/40 of
a Canadian penny per pound) This brings almost no economic benefit to BC since there is
no value-added processing on the wood. To add insult to injury Weyerhaeuser refuses to
sell raw wood to Canadian value-added manufacturers.

The whole industry of destroying the forests will be over in 15 years, but still these bastards want to destroy every last hectare of
primeval forest and with it all the species that depend on them such a grizzlies,
mountain caribou, marmots, murelets, eagles and salmon — all the species tourists
come from all over the earth to see.

The irony is tourism from the remaining forests is already bringing in far more money
to the province than the sale of raw logs, but Weyerhaeuser has hypnotised (bribed
actually) the corrupt provincial government into doing whatever they ask for.

Weyerhaeuser flacks have convinced the loggers of BC that the environmentalists are
their enemies for trying to preserve at the least the core seed areas necessary to
eventually restore the forests. All Weyerhaeuser does is grow tree farms of genetically
identical trees with no diversity hence susceptible to pests and even slight variations
in climate. Old growth forests support thousands of species. They have openings for the
light to get through. Tree farms trees are all identical height and are so densely packed
no light reaches the forest floor and support relatively little animal life.
Weyerhaeuser has destroyed jobs by mechanisation, mill closures and blocking all
value-added processing, cleverly blaming all the economic hardship they create on the
environmentalists.

These ancient forests are far more valuable just left alone than as wood for
toothpicks. They support the complex ecosystem of British Columbia. You might call them,
along with the tropical rainforests, the lungs of our planet, cleansing the air of CO₂
and refreshing the oxygen.

As the habitat is destroyed, inevitably the species that depend on it die with it. For
example, the mountain caribou winters in the ancient forests living off the tree lichens
as do deer. As the old forests disappear the animals congregate in the remaining pockets
where they are easily slaughtered by predators. Brown bears winter over in the hollows of
the ancient cedars. As the cedars disappear, so do the bears.

There have been 6 massive extinctions in our planet’s history. The last big one
was 60 million years ago that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. We are in the midst of an
even more rapid and bigger extinction event right now, caused by human activity. There
are 160 to 270 species extinctions a day. 86% of this is caused
by habitat loss. You can’t preserve species without preserving their habitat.

Logging has destroyed almost all the ancient forests, yet these loons won’t stop
until it all completely gone. They won’t even leave enough to reseed the earth with
biodiversity if at some point in future when we recognise planet earth needs its lungs
after all, no matter what the economic inconvenience.

Biologist E.O. Wilson has discovered that it is not enough to preserve pockets of
habitat. If you want to maintain biodiversity and if you want the top level predators to
survive, these pockets must be connected by corridors. You need large
contiguous hunks of habitat if you want any hope of preservation.

Why is this? Imagine the extreme opposite to large contigous preservation blocks, one
ancient tree per 10 blocks in an urban setting preserved. If the squirrels in one tree
were killed, that would be the end of squirrels in that tree. It would be almost
impossible for them to be colonised from squirrels in another tree. Further, the
squirrels in one tree would be come inbred like hillbillies, force to mate with
relatives, leading to genetically degenerate offspring and eventual extirpation.

We have parks, but typically these protect only regions of little economic interest,
such as alpine meadows and bogs. We need to protect at least the remaining stands of
trees over 1000 years old, along with corridors between them for
genetic transfer and animal migration. The irony is economics and job loss are the only
arguments used to justify the destruction of the ancient forests even though the
province-wide economics and tourism-related job creation favour preserving them.

The BC Liberals have tremendous chutzpah. The forest lands are public lands. They
belong to the people of BC. The people of BC have made it clear they want these forests
to be sustainably managed, yet the Liberals have effectively handed over the forests
solely for the short-term economic benefit of a few foreign companies. The liberals have
shut out both BC business and even the BC government from any benefit and are cheering on
the destruction of the last of the ancient forests. This is ecological vandalism and
corruption on a massive scale.